I think I was just the victim of a drive-by chezzing.

You should see what's in my box number 2.

Answer to last question. just a kid - that's how we handled thing when we were kids.

Before I weigh in on the twitter discussion can some Wordly Twitter Traveler explain this phenomenon:

https://twitter.com/PurpleReign14

https://twitter.com/qbanqt

https://twitter.com/AdrianCJax

Et cetera. If this isn't parody I need to amend a previous statement to say, "Don't form your quasistrawman avatar of what 'the left' is from the screechiest college kid or the dumbest centrist dip**** POC twitterite."

I haven’t watched the youtubes yet so can’t really comment on them. I will eventually get to it though.

As far as twitter goes. If someone just posts super ideological inflammatory posts all the time, and not much else, I Just assume it is a Russian troll until definitively proven otherwise.

The Neoliberal Left Is An Anti-Left .
I discovered this website In Dark Times recently and it isn't bad. They are some true leftists which means I agree with a lot but disagree in ways too. This article hits at a lot of things I've tried to say in this thread and in other places and is worth a read.
Essentially he argues that what we see with what he calls the "neoliberal left" serves a function for the ruling class and that left has abandoned class politics in favor of identity politics because the latter doesn't threaten "markets".
There is another article he links to that also is all over this thread that is worth a read The false dilemma of class vs race that I've wanted to talk about here but haven't but it is also worth a read.

Reading "the false dilemma of class vs race" right now. Very good read. And I think the author more eloquently articulates the concerns I constantly bring up with the "leftist elite" and their myopic focus on identity.

Identity is everything in politics. The overwhelming driving force on the right for like 50 years has been a singular identity, white Christians. The right is obsessed with their identity. They are terrified of the country becoming brown and whites no longer being a majority they are quickly embracing authoritarians and shredding supposedly sacred norms to hold on to power.

You don't think that isn't a little bit revisionist history? For at least part of the last 50 years you had cold war propaganda propelling the right. If they transitioned into identity poltics that likely didn't occur until the advent of cable news.

Bull ****ing ****.

You should really read the articles. That is exactly what the neoliberal elites (and neoconservative elites) who are taking all the wealth want you to say and think. Divide and rule.

The Civil Rights movement caused white flight from the Democratic Party. And the Republican Party has actively courted white identity ever since. That’s what the Southern Strategy was. It’s pretty well documented. Now things are accelerated, though. Because whites have a disproportionate share of political power, despite their shrinking demographic, yet politics runs way behind culture. Businesses cater to population centers, which are filled with non-whites and non Christians, so now there are as campaigns catering to a pluralistic society and the white Christians feel threatened (even though they will retain a plurality for our lifetimes) and they are flipping the **** out. I’m old enough to remember the supposed values voters. They all lined up behind Trump, a dishonest philandering cheat who has had three wives because all of a sudden they have to press one for English, Starbucks stopped printing “Merry Christmas” on their cups, and Colin Kapernick knelt during the National Anthem. You can’t tell me those people aren’t motivated by identity.

That's all fine. I'm not telling you republicans aren't or haven't pandered to identity.

This is an interesting example of neoliberalism in action.



https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...der-education/

The following link indicates that when M2B is talking bout "whites' taking a hard turn right, what he really means is (relatively) poor, uneducated whites. So basically we live in a society where growing income inequality is the paramount social problem of our day, and M2B is attacking mostly poor people as the problem.

This is what neoliberal elites want. They want liberals blaming poor whites and conservatives blaming poor blacks for the state of affairs. Divide and rule.

You said it wasn't happening before cable news, which is plainly false.

I think there is plenty about that position that is defendable but I don't see why it's important. M2B said that identity has been the dominant driver of Republicans for the last 50 years and I brought up the cold war--which ended right when cable news started. I'm fine saying identity became dominant at that point. That it existed before that doesn't change my thinking there.

Did you read the link I posted? Identity was Nixon's whole electoral strategy!

I looked at it and I brought it up even in this thead early on but then forgot about it. Possibly I'm being influenced by Matt Taibbi narrative which places an importance on cable news. I'm fine admitting I'm somewhat wrong--but can it be said that identity also drove Reagan or was that more cold war rhetoric and economic dissatisfaction?

I'm not sure what you're talking about "more". Different aspects worked on different groups. Cold War rhetoric was a useful cudgel against New Deal economic liberalism aka the government is the problem, and hyping up that the New Deal benefited minorities worked on whites with more racial conservative attitudes. There's a reason why, in the radical conservative minds Communists and minorities are in league with one another. Because it fuses the two strands, anti Cold War economic attitudes with that minorities are out to get an "unfair" advantage, together.

You could watch the George Wallace and Buckley debates to see how the two different strands of conservatism fused in the 60's to 70's.. Buckley was racist, of course, but he focused on anti New Deal conservatism while George Wallace was a new Deal democrat who was, obviously, extremely racist. He was for segregation. So Wallace would start out with things like "we use the government to help out widows, the poor, etc" and Buckley would respond with something along the lines of "doesn't that help black people? Aren't they trying to take advantage of these programs" and Wallace hating that minorities would get something would have to respond that it would. Buckley would then talk about how it would be better to let people work hard for themselves and only help those who truly deserved it. The implication being that by cutting back on welfare policies minorities would be hurt more than whites because whites were the ones who were truly working according to the racial conservative, which if you're going to bring economic conservatives into the fold that's the second best option other than explicitly laying out the welfare state for just white people, which the Civil Rights Movement made it pretty impossible to do.

Reagan kicked off his campaign with a speech on state's rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town only remarkable for the brutal murder of civil rights activists to assure white southerners that he was one of them.

Well I won't argue with either of those posts. Whatever disagreements that exist are matters of degree, with you perhaps wanting to give racial animus/white identity a little more credit for driving the gop than I would, but I'll admit that perhaps you're correct

****ing wild that Kelhus and Luckbox continue to be so incredibly poorly informed about the basic parameters of political discourse that they have somehow aligned advancing their personal right wing politics with calls for Full Communism.

But I'm in, comrades. Let's do it.

Can you explain what you mean by "basic parameters of political discourse" and what I'm supposed to understand about it?

I wonder how long Kelhus had to look to find a poll that had education crosstabs but not income crosstabs tho

No, as I just said where you are at now is where I'd like you to stay and I'm somewhat concerned that if you did learn about how to place yourself on the political spectrum you'd no longer be up for Full Communism.

Part of your issue is continually trying to put people into boxes.
I haven't "gone" anywhere since I started posting here. I've learned some things in this thread but the thesis is still the same. I agree with leftists to the extent that they understand that power lies outside of popular conceptions like democracy and pluralism. To the extent that solutions are offered is where I likely diverge from them.